Congressional leaders pointed fingers across the aisle on the Sunday morning talk shows over the resurfacing debt limit clash, calling for different approaches to the nation's budgetary problems.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., spoke in separate interviews on ABC's This Week, and CBS's Face The Nation, trying to delineate the battle lines in what is looming as another battle over government spending and raising the debt ceiling.

Boehner recently injected the prospect of another prolonged standoff with the White House over raising the debt ceiling again, a troublesome issue that nearly brought the nation to the brink of its first default last summer before cooler heads prevailed at the last instant. Still, the country's credit rating was downgraded as a result.

The speaker has argued the debt limit's increase must be matched in equal measure by budget cuts, and it should be addressed before the election, though the timeline for the nation's coffers would allow it to be put off until after November.

Why do we always have to allow elections to get in the way of doing the right thing? he asked on This Week.

This is about jobs, he added. If we really are serious about getting the American people back to work, then removing the clouds of uncertainty are important.

McConnell echoed Boehner's call to address the issue largely through cuts in expenditures, though he did concede it may be best to put the issue off until after the election.

The speaker and I have been the adults in the room, arguing that we ought to do something about the nation's most serious long-term problem, McConnell said on Face the Nation.

The speaker wants to go over the edge, she added. We have cut a trillion, over a trillion dollars in the Budget Control Act since the Budget Control Act of last year. There has to be more reductions, but we have to have revenue and have to have growth.